The horror: imperialism's African legacy

[struggle4progress]

Reviewed by Austin Merrill

Sunday, May 8, 2005
Histories of the Hanged
The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire
By David Anderson
NORTON; 406 PAGES; $25.95
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Imperial Reckoning
The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya
By Caroline Elkins
HENRY HOLT; 475 PAGES; $27.50

<snip> These two books turn that notion on its head. Anderson and Elkins show that despite the wicked reputation hung on the Mau Mau, far more killing -- much of it done in gruesome fashion -- was carried out by the British and the Kenyans who remained loyal to the British throne. Whereas Mau Mau killed fewer than 100 British citizens and about 1,800 Kenyan loyalists, the British killed at least 20,000 Mau Mau rebels. Elkins believes the numbers are even more lopsided and malevolent, that even Kikuyu who were not affiliated with Mau Mau became targets of the British and that hundreds of thousands of them may have been killed in cold blood. And for every death, there were at least as many rapes and maimings.

All in the name of civilization. Elkins doesn't mince words: "In the face of incontrovertible evidence to the contrary -- for instance, the castration of a Mau Mau suspect -- the British and their loyalist supporters maintained the illusion that their actions were the epitome of civilized behavior. It was as if by insisting loudly enough, and long enough, they could somehow revise the reality of their campaign of terror, dehumanizing torture, and genocide."

With their country's global imperial power withering, and lifestyles of the nobility under attack at home, many Britons discovered that Kenya was one of the last places they could live in the luxury they desired. "Every white man who disembarked from the boat ... became an instant aristocrat," Anderson writes. "They exploited Kenya to attain a quality of life that few could have aspired to elsewhere. The privileges of a landed aristocracy ... could be had by almost anyone with a white skin in Kenya."

And the native peoples of Kenya -- especially the Kikuyu -- were left to suffer. The British evicted them from their land to allow white settlers to build grand plantations. Those who sought work from the settlers were treated as slaves. And when the Mau Mau rebellion prompted the British to declare a state of emergency, the Kikuyu were rounded up, prosecuted in flimsy trials and sent to prison or barbed-wired detention camps. <snip>

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/05/08/RVG3FCHG2T1.DTL&type=books